What: A social campaign to raise awareness and funds for the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund that uses an adaptation of a classic carol to spotlight a modern crisis.

Who: United Nations’ Central Emergency Response Fund, VML

Why we care: The Christmas and holiday spirit is all about generosity and love, right? This campaign, and its stories of struggle, is a call to turn that into something real. The strong, resilient young women featured here come from conflict areas ranging from Iraq to Sudan. They illustrate the power of the global community—and that, in the midst of so much wrong in the world, there is potential for all of us to do plenty of right. In this case, that means donating to the United Nations’ Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), which delivers rapid funding to humanitarian crises as they occur and helps food, water, and other life-saving aid reach people in situations of conflict or natural disaster.

Fabio Seidl, executive creative director at agency VML, says they wanted to use all attention and emotion around the holidays to make a point. “We used a holiday gift-wrapping paper to cover our cry for help to millions of victims of war, famine and natural disasters,” he says.

The campaign also features short profiles of three of the young women: 27-year-old Ekhlas, who fled Darfur; 13-year-old Fatimah, who left Iraq at 6; and 23-year-old Nyawal from South Sudan.